What next on council tax?

"THE party's going to be non-partisan. It's not going to be right or left." Comedian Sandi Toksvig, launching her new Women's Equality Party. Still joking, eh?

GOOD luck to Miss Toksvig but this is 2015, not 1915. Isn't the battle for equality almost won? These days, some men see women rather as the English perceive the Scots, a part of the population who moan about being downtrodden and exploited while they are actually doing pretty well.

LAST September's Scottish referendum revealed the existence of thousands of silent No voters who said little yet swung the vote for the Union. The general-election equivalents are the so-called Shy Tories. They are the ones who know exactly how they are going to vote next Thursday but tell the pollsters "I haven't made my mind up yet." Yes, they have. They're just a bit embarrassed about voting Tory. The question is, how many are there?

DAVID Cameron promises a Tory government would not raise VAT, income tax or National Insurance. But what about that other tax, the one that for many people is the biggest tax they pay? All the parties have been remarkably quiet about council tax. I predict a right old caning.

ACCORDING to that acclaimed research institute Heinz Cup Soup, more than two-thirds of us have an emotional attachment to our favourite mug and resent sharing it with strangers. I plead guilty to the first charge but not guilty to the second. My favourite mug is the one with the pop-art image of a woman and the slogan: "Oh, God. I'm so bloody blonde sometimes." Totally inappropriate but I just like the size, shape and feel of it. I also enjoy letting visitors use it. My sister-in-law gave me a very steely glare.

OUR changing language. The new Peter Kay series, Car Share, was shown on the internet before being screened on telly, and has been hugely popular. Or as The Guardian put it: "It confounded some people's expectations that premiering it on iPlayer as part of a trial Netflix-style system would cannibalise its television audience to a large degree." Er, precisely.

THE biter bit. I wrote recently about being targetted by online adverts for Triumph bras. The only explanation I could offer was that I'd been looking at Google images of old Triumph Heralds. A reader sneered. He suggested I had been furtively cyber-searching ladies' frillies and asked whether my interest for classic cars extended to the Beaufort Berlie, the Panther Platex or the Plymouth Provocateur. Within hours he came back chastened with: "Would you believe it? Since my last email I have also received a Triumph Perfect Bra for You advert."

ANOTHER reader tells me he innocently did a Google search for his son who wanted the correct name for those Russian dolls which fit inside each other (Matryoshka). Since then the reader has been bombarded by adverts offering "thousands of single Russian women." Have you noticed, the more we blokes offer innocent explanations, the more guilty we sound?

DR Gary Weitzman, co-author of a new book, How to Speak Cat, says every cat will make up to 24 miaows that mean specific and consistent things. In other words, they try to talk to us. For us humans, the obvious next step is to learn the noises and try to have a conversation. I foresee one problem. Cats make noises solely to give orders to humans. Why would they want the domestic staff to answer back?